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Monday, May 28, 2012

I was supposed to do a cake house for one of my cake decorating lessons last year. But, I missed that particular lesson as I were overseas during that December period. So when I was planning for a birthday cake to celebrate my little girl's birthday in school this year, the cake house came to my mind. A cake house that is a little fairy-tale like, but not exactly a princess castle either. Instead of searching for cute biscuits to decorate the roof-top, I decided to bake some macarons shells for the roof-top!

Last year, I made a Princess Barbie Doll Cake for little girl's birthday, and that took me over 3 days to complete the various stages (though it could be done within a day, but I prefer to relax over 3 days). This cake house? From preparing the mixed-berries compote, lemon curd, buttercream, macarons roof-top, baking the sponge cakes to putting the whole house together, I managed to complete the cake in 2 days! Getting more efficient, huh ^_^

As the cake is rather heavy after stacking layers together, I inserted "support pillars" in the middle to prevent the bottom layers from getting squashed (see picture above). These pillars were actually chocolate wafer rolls. If you do not have chocolate wafer rolls on hand, you can use thick straws too (method refer here).

This is a portion of the leftover cake at the bottom layers (about 1/3 the full height of the cake). If you examine carefully, the layers from bottom to top are: chocolate sponge, plain sponge, mixed berries buttercream, mixed berries compote, plain sponge, lemoncurd buttercream, plain sponge, mixed berries buttercream.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

My hubby and little girl's birthdays falls on one day after another, so we always celebrate their birthdays together. My preference is to have a simple birthday party at home, where we invite our family members for the celebration.

Back to the birthday cake. It is a 10" mango mousse cake, with 3 layer of sponge, 3 layers of mango mousse and finally topped with mango jelly.

Share with you a baking tip which I find very useful. I learnt this during my baking class. If your cake ring is not tall enough for your cake, you can push up the ring a little (after the cake has set), so that you can add another 1 or 2 inches to the cake height. For this mango mousse cake, after I prepared the sponge/mousse layers and set the cake, I loosened the cake ring and push up the ring by another inch. This allows me to create the top jelly layer. To ensure the cake ring does not slide down, I secured with toothpicks around the cake as shown in the picture below. From this picture, you can see this is really a very tall mango mousse cake.

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Remove the outer hard skin of the aloe vera with a sturdy vegetable peeler. Cut into big chunks and simmer the aloe vera in a pot of hot water for about 10 minutes. Remove the aloe vera chunks and discard the water. Though I've read there are many benefits and healing properties of the juice and gel of aloe vera, I still dislike the raw smell and taste of it. I find that simmering helps to remove the unpleasant smell and taste of the raw aloe vera.

Cut the aloe vera into small cubes and combine with the lemongrass syrup. Keep in fridge for a few hours before serving. Add a few slices of lemon and serve chill.

3) Place a slice of cake onto cake board and brush with syrup. Spread a thin layer of whipped cream on the cake, top with some chopped fruits and cover with more whipped cream. Repeat steps with second slice of cake. Stack the third slice of cake and brush with syrup.

4) Cover the whole cake with a thin layer of cream (crumb coat). Keep in fridge/freezer for 10 minutes. Remove and cover the whole cake with remaining whipped cream (reserved some for garnish).

5) Decorate the cake with strawberries and mango.

Note:

I run out of whipping cream and had whisked only about 200g whipping cream. It was not enough to cover the whole cake. Hence, this cake was covered with topping cream (or non-dairy cream) instead.

An early Mother's Day gift ...

An early Mother's Day present for me..... additions to Fong's Kitchen: new oven and base cabinets from IKEA.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Recently, I find myself preparing many one-dish meal or one-pot meal for dinner. Should I blame the hot weather or just my plain laziness? I'm just not in the mood for cooking. So when I saw Ellena's Kimchi Tofu Soup, I decided to have it as a hotpot by adding more ingredients to the soup.

There's no fixed recipe for making this hotpot meal. You can prepare a vegetarian kimchi hotpot by omitting all meat; or like what I did, add some chicken, sausages and bacon for a complete meal. To make the soup more tasty, I stir-fried the cabbage with ginger slices before adding to the soup and added a cup of homemade stock (or you can use store-bought stock) to prepare the hotpot.